Excerpt: 1914 - Start of World War I. 1916 - Murder of royal adviser Grigori Rasputin. 1917 - February Revolution leads to abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and to rule by a provisional government. 1917 - October Revolution led by the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin. 1917-1923 - Russian civil war between the Reds (Bolsheviks) and Whites, with foreign aid supplied to Whites. 1918 - Lenin orders the executions of Nicholas II and his family. 1922 - USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or simply the Soviet Union), officially established. 1924 -Death of Vladimir Lenin.

Click here to print this timeline with three questions (PDF). This Russian Revolution timeline worksheet is awesome because it really helps to place Lenin and the events of 1917 into an historical framework. On one easy-to-follow handout, students see Vladimir I bringing Christianity to Russia in 988, and another Vladimir, who believed (like Marx) religion to be the opiate of the masses, bringing the Bolsheviks to power in 1917.